On Monday, Dallas’ Quality of Life, Arts and Culture Committee reopened the chapter on the future of the library system, directing Dallas Public Library Director Manya Shorr to keep all of Dallas’ 29 libraries open and explore a new regional model.
This decision isn’t responsible stewardship for Dallas’ budget or the smartest path for the library system as a whole.
We urged the city to ease people into the changes and inform them about the future of their neighborhood libraries, but acknowledging those concerns doesn’t mean ignoring the financial reality facing the library system.
The original proposal to close four branches would have freed up $2.6 million in annual operating costs. While not a huge amount, the same calculations are playing out in other areas across the budget. Take Dallas’ aging community pools, for example. A few million dollars here and there quickly add up.
Libraries are fixtures in many neighborhoods, and understandably, residents want to keep every branch open. But city leaders can’t say yes to everything. They must also consider the tradeoffs.
More than 4,000 people responded to the survey conducted by the Friends of the Dallas Public Library and the Dallas Public Library, and respondents overwhelmingly supported increasing funding for libraries instead of closing branches. But surveys like this rarely ask what residents would sacrifice elsewhere in the budget to make that happen.
Staff brought forward a reasonable plan in January to begin shifting the library system toward a regional model by closing a handful of neighborhood branches. If the plan was communicated well — branches slated for closure justified based on usage numbers and a strategic explanation of which branches would serve as flagship facilities — it could have been a good compromise.
But that is not the plan Dallas is moving forward with. The revised proposal will designate five flagship libraries to serve as regional hubs, open seven days a week and with evening hours, while the other neighborhood libraries will remain open, but with reduced hours and staff.
Is it really better to keep every neighborhood library open if some are operating for so few hours, with limited staff that they are effectively unavailable to many residents? Would closing a few branches actually help free up resources to make the regional hubs the best they can be?
Keeping every branch open may sound like the path of least resistance, but it’s not necessarily the best one for Dallas or the library system.
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